Three Weeks, Two Marathons, One Chronic Illness

A Father’s Story

No, this isn’t about me. It’s about my father, Earle. It’s a new story that I heard this weekend. I thought it was hilarious, hopefully you will too.

When I was young, maybe 12 or so my brother Dave and sister Judy rented a house together. It was an old three story house. The top floor was turned into the perfect bar. It already had a bar, they put in beer signs and a pool table, and gave it the perfect name: Busch’s Dive Bar. The only thing it didn’t have was a refrigerator/freezer on the third floor. I’m not sure why, but it had to go on the second floor.

It was an old fridge, with a very small freezer inside the fridge. The only problem was that the freezer didn’t have a door. Well, my father the engineer, and english major mind you, decided to make a door. He took some styrofoam and a piece of plexiglass and made a door. It took him about 30 minutes.

Well, being the engineer that he was, he set out to layout the word freezer on the new freezer door. He layed out the letters so that they would be evenly spaces. He created nice block letters in perfect type with a sharpie. He spent 2-3 hours working on the lettering. At least that’s how my brother Pete tells it. When he finished, Pete walks in an looks at the perfect lettering, etc. and says “What in the hell is a Feezer?” Dad looks at it and says “Well, hell, I forgot the R! Oh well, it will have to do.”

My mother says that it was the funniest thing that he was an English Major that couldn’t spell. She says that his spelling was horrible. I can only imagine the people who moved in when they left asking “What idiot wrote Feezer on this door?” I can’t stop laughing when I think about it.

I miss my dad very much. I miss his sense of humor and I miss hearing the crazy stories about his life. Most of all, I just miss having him around. But, it stories like this that will keep him in my heart forever.

So now if someone asks, “Where’s the feezer?” I’ll have a clue what they are talking about.